Effective methods of supplying large and small components to a manufacturing plant on a timely and efficient basis enhances modern mass production processes. These same manufacturing processes and procedures also generate a large quantity of refuse and industrial waste which need to be removed from the manufacturing site to proper waste disposal locations or to recycling plants. These components supply and waste removal needs create a requirement for effective means for timely and constant delivery to manufacturing sites of a variety of industrial components and products. Without the timely arrival and a continuous supply of such components, mass production of finished goods rapidly encounters troublesome and inefficient production delays.
Examples of recyclable waste components might include plastic containers used for encapsulating or transporting fragile electronics components which are used in manufacture of larger electrical units. The plastic containers or carriers for these components are essentially waste products which in many cases can be reprocessed for additional or continuous use. Accumulation of these waste components create a problem for the manufacturer and requires special handling of the components and timely and continuous removal from the manufacturing site in order to avoid unmanageable build-up of waste at the manufacturing site.
Supply of components to manufacturing plants and removal of both finished goods and waste products from the manufacturing plant have been solved in a variety of ways. In some cases entire railroad cars or trucks are parked at the manufacturing site for the purpose of acting as temporary storage. These railroad cars and tractor trailers are extremely expensive components to have idly parked. The extreme cost competitiveness involved in mass production prohibits the use of expensive containers of this type. Such transportation trailers and cars are also prohibitively expensive for collecting finished product or waste product for the same reason.
Other methods of delivering components to manufacturing plants and for removing finished goods and waste products involve some form of container which can be delivered to the manufacturing plant and which is essentially a single-use container. Examples of these single-use containers might include containers made of various types of compressed paper. Other such containers include reinforced paper containers or wooden crates. Combinations of wood and paper-type fabric also are frequently used for transporting components for manufacturing processes. Most of these wood or paper containers are destroyed or unsuitable for repeated use. Accordingly, these containers are the source of additional manufacturing waste products.
Many of the paper and wood containers are sufficiently large and laden with materials which are sufficiently heavy so that they present handling problems at the plant. These handling problems at the plant have typically been solved by the use of wooden pallets. Wood and fabric containers or other rigid containers containing heavy materials are frequently stacked on wooden pallets which have been constructed so that a forklift may be used to engage the pallet and lift the pallet and container filled with components to a location where further disposition may be made of the contents of the container.
These wooden containers and the pallets themselves become waste materials and are frequently damaged in the process of handling the heavy containers. The pallets are made from inexpensive wood with the view that the pallets will be damaged beyond use after a limited number of usages. Consequently, these pallets become additional waste material for a manufacturer.
Large containers which have been successfully used in manufacturing processes and in waste disposal procedures and which are intended for repeated use are frequently extremely large containers of sturdy construction. Many waste disposal containers, as an example, are made from thick rolled steel plates which permit rough handling of the container without destruction. These containers are as high as six feet tall and as large as six feet square or larger. Frequently, these sturdy large containers are also the same containers or similar to containers used for shipping components to manufacturers for use.
Typical uses of these large containers might be involved in the supply to an electrical units manufacturer where large numbers of transistors, resistors, capacitors and other small parts are used by the manufacturer to assemble radios, televisions and similar electronic components. Resistors, as an example, might be shipped to the manufacturer in bulk in such containers and deposited at the manufacturers warehouse for use in the manufacturing process.
The automobile industry also has a high demand for supplies of nuts, bolts, washers and similar connecting devices. Frequently, these connectors are purchased in bulk from suppliers of such units. The bulk supplies are shipped from the manufacturer to the auto producer in containers which are deposited at the manufacturing warehouse or at the input line of the auto assembler.
Other industries also use bulk supplies of products. An example in the plastics industry might include plastic pellets which are supplied to a plastic molding manufacturer. Plastic pellets having the physical characteristics required by the manufacturer of plastic parts are supplied in bulk in large containers from which the raw plastic pellets are removed and further processed in the manufacturing process.
Likewise, bulk delivery of food products or components for food products such as flour, seasonings and similar food ingredients frequently need to be delivered to processors of packaged food products for mixing with a variety of components to produce packaged or finished food products.
As product is removed from the bulk containers by the manufacturer, the containers either become waste product themselves or if they are of the sturdy steel-plate construction or similar construction, they become empty units which must be stored until reuse. Whether the result of the manufacturing process is generation of a large volume of waste product from the containers themselves or the presence at the manufacturing site of a large volume of empty containers, there, nevertheless, is created for the manufacturer a handling problem and storage cost. Any reusable containers must be handled and stored until the container can be reused. These handling costs and storage costs all add incremental costs to the cost of manufacturing the end product and, therefore, removal of these cost components from the cost of manufacturing is very desirable on the part of manufacturers.
Additional problems encountered by goods transportation industries might be illustrated by the movement of household and industrial goods by transportation companies. Frequently, household goods or business goods might be packed in containers for loading on larger trucks. These containers are essentially one-way shipping units which must then be transported in an empty condition back to another site for filling with additional household goods. It is important to such transportation companies that the trucks hauling empty containers haul as many such containers as possible. Therefore, an effective and efficient collapsible container will permit such transportation companies to effectively and efficiently haul large numbers of these collapsible type containers to sites where they can be assembled for reuse. Likewise, storage of containers awaiting use can present costly warehousing if the containers cannot be collapsed to as small a unit as possible.
There is substantial incentive for providing a container which avoids many of these problems.